Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to become pope, not only represents a paradox for the papacy, but also the larger history of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuits are formally known.

“On the one hand, Jesuits aren’t supposed to be in positions of authority,” said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit and founder of Ignatius Press. “On the other hand, they’re supposed to be obedient to the church.”

The Jesuits have played a key role in the history of the church. For centuries, they have served as its leading missionaries, founded its most prestigious universities and committed themselves to alleviating the deepest poverty.

St. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier, founded the order in 1540 after being wounded in battle and having a religious conversion during his convalescence. Jesuits are sometimes known as “God’s Marines,” after Loyola’s military history, and their missions worldwide.

Yet despite their prominence — at 18,000 members, they are the church’s largest religious order — Jesuits have had a complicated history with the institutional church and the hierarchy in Rome. With the first Jesuit pope, things just got a bit more complicated.

With their emphasis on missions work and intellectual pursuits, Jesuits often work on the margins of the church, sometimes overstepping boundaries set by Rome. It’s a point of pride among some Jesuits that they frequently challenge authority and seem to have a predisposition for coloring outside the lines.

“Since their founding, Jesuits have consistently offended people … But if there’s a barricade in the street, there’s going to be a Jesuit on both sides of that barricade,” said David Collins, a history professor at Georgetown University.

The left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept across Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s — including Francis’ native Argentina, where he headed the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979 — is just one example. Bergoglio opposed it; many of his priests openly supported it.

Here in the United States, the New York-based Jesuit magazine America frequently challenges the hierarchy, so much so that one of Pope Benedict XVI’s first acts after his election was to order the removal of the Rev. Thomas Reese as editor.

“This is all new ground,” Reese said Thursday in Rome, where he’s working as an analyst on the papal transition for National Catholic Reporter.

“We never had a Jesuit pope, so I think we are all trying to figure out how this works, and it was a total surprise to everybody: surprise to the Jesuits, surprise to the media, probably a surprise to Pope Francis. This is something we’ll just work out as time goes on.”

Jesuits have also been accused of wielding too much influence, a concern that led Pope Clement XIV to suppress the order in the 1700s. (Pope Pius VII restored the society in 1814.) The Superior General of the Jesuits is informally known as “the Black Pope” because of the power the position has held in the past.

In the early 1980s, when the Jesuit Superior General was sidelined by a stroke, Pope John Paul II stepped in with his own appointee, rather than allow the Jesuits to elect their own leader.

“That was his right as pope, but it still discouraged many Jesuits at the time, wrote the Rev. James Martin, an editor at America and the author of “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything,” in a piece for CNN. “With a Jesuit pope, that cloud has been, if not removed, then lifted much higher.”

Patrick Hornbeck, a theology professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York, said Jesuits are accustomed to the tensions.

“Jesuits are on the frontiers and in the heart of the Catholic church,” he said. “And when you’re doing work on the margins, there’s going to be some natural friction with what’s happening in the center.”

Normally, if a Jesuit is appointed a bishop, he must first seek permission from his Jesuit superiors before he can accept the job. So what happens when a Jesuit is tapped to be pope?

“Most people think when the College of Cardinals comes and asks you to take on a job, that’s the voice of God telling you this is your new mission in life,” Reese said. “It’s pretty hard to say no to that.”

Collins said he hopes that new pope will bring some of his Jesuit training and tradition to bear during his papacy.

“Jesuits work hard to cultivate spiritual depth, and pragmatism. We get a glimpse of a little bit of that in (Bergoglio’s) time as bishop. He has a vision of simplicity and connection with the poor and marginalized,” Collins said. “I hope another part of what shapes his papacy is that pragmatic, let’s-get-it-done attitude.”

16 Comments

Daniel Hoffman

Some of us were inspired by Liberation Theology. They believed on Basic Christian Communities as a means of alleviating poverty through teamwork and coalition building. It made poor people harder to prey upon and got their leaders killed. There was so much hope before John Pail II. He helped crush it because he failed to distinguish Communism and originary Christianity.

Patrick

You are exactly right. The Jesuits believe that no one should be rich. They believe a person has a right to be “comfortable” and no more. The Jesuits were/are also big supporters of the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Daniel Hoffman

Did you ever hear of the saying, “united we stand; divided we fall.”? The powerful have armies of lawyers, accounts, lobbyists, media personalities, and politicians at their beck and call. They are telling you to go it alone and be the tough cowboy. They are collectivists and they crush anyone who tries to go it alone without remorse. Of course they tell you to stand up for yourself and that unions and community organizers are your enemy. They will laugh in your face when they turn your children into beggars.

Daniel Hoffman

Some people think of Jesus when they think of social justice. The theory that God punishes those whom He dislikes by making them poor and and rewards those He loves by making them wealthy gets a lot of clerics paid well. Unfortunately, it is upside down Christianity.

Diana

Good article…what it left out is the time one of the popes disbanded them, the occurrence of Teilhard deChardin within the order, and the fact that many Jesuits today have been seduced into the modernist ideology. Their stand on social justice is worldly-oriented and very political. The Jesuit order has had in its ranks many holy,saintly men in the past. I hope our Pope is in their ranks. Fr. Malachi Martin,wherever you are, pray for us.

Daniel Hoffman

Read the Catholic Encyclopedia about the history of the Jesuits in the Americas. They sided with the Conquistadors against the Fransiscans when Ferdinand went to the Pope and put the New World under the Archbishop of Madrid. The King’s bishop ordered the Fransiscans into monasteries because they opposed the rape and enslavement of the natives they had converted.

Jesuits teach the elite. The dictators of Latin America are mostly Jesuit taught. One hundred and seventy priests were thrown into the sea by the Argentine dictatorship while our new pope, and John Paul II, broke bread with them.

Greetings in Christ
I urge the New Pope Francis the First to go to Israel and stop the Jerusalem to be divided and given to Palestinians. We are at the Passover/Easter ,does it means anything to world ??????????????.The intention is to give away Judea as well Judea was given to Israel FOR EVER AND EVER.,yet it is in plan to be given to Palestinians.

Patrick

Sorry to burst your bubble, Reverend, but most of the Jews now living in the Middle East are Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews who originated in Eastern Europe. They have no original connection to Palestine. Also, the Balfour Declaration, upon which the “nation” of “Israel” was based stipulated a dual state to be shared with the Palestinians. Now the Jews, not only don’t want to abide by the original agreement, but they also want to kick the Palestinians out completely when they are the only people living their that are truly Semitic.

ernst ford

Vatican vagabonds-assassins encouraged the kidnapping of my ancestors for the purpose of exploiting them. What kind of god would send his representatives to pillage rob and kidnap other peoples to Christianize them. Luciferans/Lucifer worshippers do devil work. To call yourselves representatives of god is to be fraud perpetrators. The Vatican owes an apology to all the people throughout the universe that was robbed of their resources and dignity. E. Ford

[…] (RNS) Jesuits are bound by oath not to seek higher office in the Roman Catholic Church, and now one of them has been elected to its highest office: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Pontifex Maximus. […]